Omnus

People often further respond with something like: "I don't know about you, but I'd prefer that me and my loved ones die - the universe would get boring after so long". Of course, the vast majority of these people would still yearn for life even on their death beds at age 97 - and if technology and medicine allowed us to have sound minds and bodies by that age, the yearning would be even greater.

Who wants oblivion when eternal adventure could await us?

We can point to behaviors that are unique to us. Since these behaviors must have some cognitive basis, they can serve to tell us how different we are. There is clearly a reason that no other animals understand abstract math or build rockets that fly into space. We simply haven't seen any evidence of other animals creating new knowledge and explanations using internal, rational thought in the way that humans do.

The original point of my post was simply to suggest that there is, in fact, a "psychological secret sauce" that makes humans different from other animals. We don't yet understand the nature of this secret sauce, but this should not preclude us from doing the things that De Waal wants to do: to understand animals on their own terms and avoid treating them like "defective adult humans" simply because their brains are different.

> Rather than studying where animal cognition, especially in genetically related species, resembles human cognition, we should be studying where it differs from human cognition.

I am unaware of any scientists that think we shouldn't study where animal cognition differs from human cognition. There is no reason to favor differences over similarities, they can both give insights.

As far as thought emerging solely from high abstraction/complexity, I think that is probably wishful thinking. It seems more likely that a specific kind of brain architecture is required for these abilities to arise. Complexity/abstraction may be a part of that architecture, but our brains do not seem to be much more complex than chimpanzee brains, so there is likely some sort of wiring or other structural component that gives rise to our unique capabilities. The anthropologist Ian Tattersall has written about some of these issues extensively.

I'll have to read the book to see if De Waal addresses this issue differently - but there is one glaring omission here that seems to destroy the entire argument. Human language and internal thought (the infinite use of finite means) appears to be entirely unprecedented in nature. This ability appears to gives rise to our heightened creativity and ability to model and understand the world. It is usually the first thing mentioned when psychologists talk about a "special cognitive ability" or "secret sauce", so you would have to address it if you want to make a reasonable point here.

...a better way to think about other creatures would be to ask ourselves how different species have developed different kinds of minds to solve different adaptive problems. Surely the important question is not whether an octopus or a crow can do the same things a human can, but how those animals solve the cognitive problems they face

Humans can solve problems beyond those faced in their immediate environment for survival purposes - that is the key mystery that causes us to compare other animals to ourselves. Sure, we should strive to understand the ways in which an octopus solves the problems it faces, but there is nothing wrong with asking how close it is to our own abilities in this regard.

Using a scale of 1-10 to rate the "human-ness" of AI belies the complexity of the situation. Computers are already better than humans at a huge number of tasks. In other areas, they haven't reached the level of an infant, or even a mouse.

With a MIDI keyboard and some keyboard shortcuts I can enter music extremely quickly. To write a string of 8 16th notes, for example, I can press 1 button to select the note length, then press the 8 notes on the keyboard to write the notes (this is with any modern notation program). With this app, I have to draw each individual notehead, beam across the top, and then an additional beam for the 16th notes, then I have to hope I got everything in the right place so that it correctly recognizes my intentions. On that last point, anything beyond very simple scores would probably end up being a nightmare in terms of productivity. A video from last April shows a person making a very common action - beaming more than 2 eighth notes together in a 4/4 measure, but the program thinks he wants triplets, so he has to go back and erase the marking. I can only imagine how many of these "hitches" would pop up in a more complex score.

The price is fairly low, and they seem to promising more features and refinement, so it will be interesting to see where it goes. But the input method, while neat to look at, is fundamentally a regression for professionals. A Vim-style system that allows for extremely rapid entry of music would be an interesting and useful approach, but something that might not have a wide appeal. This app will be useful for those that want to jot down ideas while not at their desktop, and many people will buy it for the novelty, but I would imagine most professionals will wait.

Even in equal temperament a G minor chord sounds different than a D minor chord because they fall on different ranges of the instruments and the human auditory system. If you try transposing a piece in G minor to D minor, you'll notice a clear difference. You could either go up a 5th or down a 4th. If you choose to go up a 5th, things will sound quite a bit brighter. Conversely, going down a 4th could very well cause the piece to sound muddier, depending on the orchestration. At any rate, the other forms of tuning have other effects, of course, and are worthwhile to explore.